10A
Entertainment
Friday April 24,1998
Dance to put swing in spring
Tesia Hostetler, Topeka junior, and Osamu Fujimaru, Tokyo sophomore, practice a dance step at the Ballroom in the Kansas Union. The KU Ballroom Dance Club will hold a Spring Ball tonight. Photo by Roger Namer/KANSAN
By Marcelo Vilela
mwilela@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
The University of Kansas Ballroom Dance Club will celebrate the rite of spring.
The group will throw its Spring Ball at 8 tonight in the Kansas Union Ballroom. Admission is $5 and everyone is invited.
"We're going to have mainly people dancing and a deejay playing only ballroom dance songs," said Tesla Hostetler, Topeka junior. "It's a chance to show off what we learned in the classes."
Hostetler said the ball would be co-sponsored by the Flamingo Dance Studio, which would provide two or three dance exhibition numbers. The ball also will feature a swing dance competition open to all participants.
The KU Ballroom Dance Club was formed about five years ago and meets from 2 to 4 p.m. Sundays in the Kansas Union Ballroom. Classes are free and open to public.
"Dancing is a lot of fun," said Shane Haas, Wellsville senior and one of the organizers of the club. "You can learn swing and cha-cha and merengue, go to clubs and impress people. It's an alternative to dancing by yourself, and you have to interact with the person you're dancing with."
Haas said the club had 30 to 40 participants of various ages. Each class is dedicated to teaching a specific dance. Some people just attend one or two classes to learn a certain dance, while others attend many classes.
Bernie and Kay Domann, Lawrence residents, volunteer their time to teach the classes. The teaching also rotates among advanced students.
Haas said, "We do everything from merengue, tango, salsa, waltz, cha-cha, foxtrot. We'll teach anything you can dance to, and we can find somebody to teach it."
Haas said the club was also a good place for meeting people and exercising. Movies such as Swingers, Shall We Dance?, Scent of a Woman and True Lies have made dance classes more popular. Haas said
He became involved with the club when he
took a class in square and ballroom dance. He said he joined because he saw dancing as an opportunity for people to practice their skills.
Advanced students perform in Kansas City, Mo., at the Leroy Walters studio. Hostetler said members always performed at Walter's Christmas shows. Some advanced students also have performed in national competitions, she said.
Bogdan Pathak, Albuquerque, N.M., senior, said he was looking forward to the Spring Ball.
"I find ballroom dancing a lot of fun and very relaxing," Pathak said. "The ball is a chance for me to see if what I learned all semester works."
Lied Center unveils playbill
Students have discount crack at early tickets
By Tamara Miller
miller@kanson.com
Kansan staff writer
The Lied Center announced the events for its 1988-99 season yesterday afternoon to a crowd of 70 patrons during a luncheon in the center's Seymour Gallery.
The guest speaker was Walter J. Turnbull, founder of The Boys Choir of Harlem. The boys choir performed a sold-out show last Friday at the center.
Turnbull spoke about the importance of the performing arts in education.
"We have this wonderful opportunity with art to transcend differences," he said.
Jackie Davis, director of the center, said next season would feature a new project: Cultural Countdown 98-99 — Latino Influences.
"Sometime we would like to do African-American influences, Asian influences," she said. "I think it's important to recognize the impact they have had on the arts."
Davis also said the center had a new campaign called "You Come First."
Karen Christilles, director of public relations, said the campaign would make single and season tickets available to students for half price. Students may purchase single tickets now.
"This is three weeks before they are available to the general public." Christilles said.
Some of next season's events include a collaborative performance by Bela Fleck, Mike Marshall and Edgar Meyer. The center will also feature the Broadway show *Patys!* and the St. Petersburg State Ice Ballet's *Romeo and Juliet*, Davis said.
Davis said the center wanted to use the campaign to let students know they were an important part of the center.
Tao Chan, Hong Kong graduate student in piano, is scheduled to perform September 20. Chan was the Vianna da Motta International Music Foundation honoree.
Chan said he was excited about performing at the center.
"I feel very proud since I live in Lawrence and have studied here for five years," he said.
Chan said he was frequent patron of the center and he was looking forward to *Madama Butterfly*, which will be performed by the New York City Opera National Company.
"The events in Lawrence are wonderful," he said. "There's something for everyone."
SUA to deliver Floating Flicks
By Marcelo Vilela
mville@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Some strange activities will take place in Potter Lake this evening.
The screening will start at dusk, around 8:30 p.m., said Brett Generaux, Kansas City, Kan., senior and SUA spectrum films coordinator.
Student Union Activities will sponsor its second Floating Flicks tonight. The event consists of a screen in the middle of the lake showing a free movie for the audience on shore.
"It's a really innovative idea, with kind of a drive in atmosphere," Generaux said. "It's a bizarre thing to begin with."
Last year, the water-bound movies featured were Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Abyss. About 200 people attended the screening, Generaux said. He said he was expecting 300 to 500 people to attend the event this year.
This year's movie will be Deliverance, a 1972 movie directed by John Boorman and starring John Voight and Burt Reynolds as businessmen who meet all kinds of dangers posed by nature and unfriendly locals during a canoe trip.
The 11-by-14-foot screen, made from four king-size bed sheets and covered with reflective material, floats on a plastic, Styrofoam and wood raft. Yesterday afternoon, SUA volunteers anchored the screen to the shore to keep it stable.
The screen will float 20 feet into the lake, positioned close to the middle. Generaux said.
"Last year was kind of a gamble, we didn't know if it was going to sink or not," Generaux said. "This year we will do more accurate adjustments."
Last year was the first year SUA sponsored the event. Floating Flicks replaced the drive-in SUA sponsored in the parking lot behind the Kansas Union a couple of years ago, Generaux said.
Fernanda Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
junior, helped build the screen yesterday afternoon.
"I'm excited because I've never seen a screen floating in a lake before." Brasileiro said. "It will give people the feeling that they're on a boat watching a movie."
Sliding opens the door to luck, chance
REVIEW
By Jeremy M. Doherty
jdoherty@kansan.com
Kansan movie critic
Peter Howitt should have a long career waiting for him in Hollywood.
His first movie, *Sliding Doors*, shows he's already mastered the Gimmick Concept.
The Gimmick Concept states that movies may possess an original idea, but then they have to weigh it down with a formulaic plot. Better yet, movies can use a combination of one or more plots.
In *Sliding Doors*, the gimmick is that the heroine's life plays itself out in two different planes of reality. In one, she dates Mr. Wrong and works in a dead-
SLIDING DOORS
Kansan Rating: **1**/2 out of ****
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Rated R for mild profanity and sexual situations
end job. In the other, she's found love with a dreamboat and has started her own business.
For the first 45 minutes, Howitt juggles both strands impressively. After that, however, he runs out of fresh ideas, and the movie begins to rely upon tired scenarios from *Sleepless in Seattle*.
Gwyneth Paltrow hides her L.A. accent to play Helen, a London career woman who's just been fired from her job at an advertising company.
On the way home, Helen manages to hop onto the subway train just as the doors slide shut behind her. Arriving home earlier than usual, she finds her boyfriend Gerry (John Lynch) engaging in some midday hanky-panky with another woman (Jeanne Triplehorn). As time passes, she finds new love with a dashing fellow named James (John Hannah) and goes into business for herself.
At the same time, Howitt shows us what would have happened if Helen had missed the subway by only a few minutes. She returns to her apartment long after the other woman has left, and Gerry is able to cover up the afternoon frolic. Suspecting nothing and growing increasingly gloomy, Helen takes a job as a waitress and shuffles through life
What works here is the audience can
see how the most insignificant turn of events (the failure to catch a subway on time) somehow led to a profound change in one person's life.
There's a terrific scene where Howitt alternates between the two "Helens" in the same nightclub. While the "early" Helen mourns her breakup with Gerry, the "late" Helen sits a few yards away with the creep, believing any cockamamie story he tosses at her.
Unfortunately, Howitt put so much effort into his idea that he wound up painting himself into a corner. After all this work, he is interested only in getting audiences to hiss at the thoughtless Gerry. The only scenes with any energy feature both Paltrow and Hannah, who share some definite screen chemistry. Consequently, only about half of *Sliding Doors* is worth the trouble.
Men With Guns attacks audience perceptions
By Jeremy M. Doherty idoherty@kansan.com Kansan movie critic
A movie about fascist regimes and guerrilla armies in Latin America is something most unainstream directors wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. If they did, they'd have to throw in one-liners, car chases and a happy ending to keep the audience happy.
Only John Sayles, who has been writing and directing movies outside the Hollywood system for two decades, would dare to give the subject the proper respect. His latest, Men With Guns, is a sobering trip through an unnamed Central American country torn anart by political strife.
True to form, the maverick Sayles shies away from high drama and pat
MEN WITH GUNS
Kansan Rating: *** out of ****
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Rated R for profinity and violence. In Spanish with English subtiles.
conclusions. What's more, he's filmed this movie almost entirely in Spanish. The only Americans in the movie are a pair of bumbling, loud-mouthed minivan drivers who haven't got a clue as to what's really happening behind the scenes.
As in Lone Star, Sayles' remarkable 1996 thriller, the director uses a simple plot device to examine a larger issue. Fuentes (Federico Luppi), a widowed doctor, leaves his cushy city practice for a jungle vacation. While there, he
decides to check on some his students, who were part of a government-sponsored mission to work with impoverished Indians in the mountains.
Fuentes visits village after village but never finds his pupils. The locals retreat to their huts if he presses for information.
Along the way, an orphan boy (Dan Rivera Gonzalez) hitches a ride with Fuentes. The naive doctor learns from his companion the army has been committing near-genocide within the dirt-poor villages to quell an insurrection.
Most likely, Fuentes' students were among the victims who were burned to death with gasoline.
The characters in Men With Guns don't have as much personality as those in Lone Star. As a result, Men
With Guns engages the brain but not the heart. Sayles' strength as a writer always has been his knack for gritty, vivid characterizations, but this movie requires us to care about an issue rather than people.
He treats the issue with an intelligence not seen since Oliver Stone's Salvador. In a flashback sequence, Sayles shows Fuentes giving his students some last-minute advice before their departure.
Fuentes tells them the story of explorer Hernando Cortes, who conquered Mexico with only a handful of outnumbered soldiers. They had guns, and that proved to be enough.
Sayles makes us keenly aware of the modern-day parallels.
Men With Guns is a searing, painful look at the destructiveness of war and its effect on society.
Questions, complaints, compliments?
e-mail editor@kansan.com